Universal Design Elements

The ideas of universal design play a key role in the construction of this lesson. Students will be called upon to use a variety of different skills in this ITU, and it is expected that they will each have their own areas of strength and weakness. Even so, there is differentiation plays a key role this unit.

Supporting Different Levels: Students will be given articles to look at and analyze in both Statistics and Government, and these reading materials will be placed at different levels of complexity to suit students who are reading above or below grade level. This will be accomplished both using Newsela to provide the same content at different levels of complexity and by providing more complex articles for advanced students in some situations. For students who struggle putting their ideas into writing, campaign groups are constructed heterogeneously so as to combine students of all academic and linguistic ability levels for support.

To further support student vocabulary development, the unit starts off by having the students create vocabulary review cards. The next day, when these terms are reviewed, they will be placed on a "word wall" for spatially-oriented students to use as a point of reference. Graphic organizers are used in the Campaign Propaganda activity to help students organize their thinking. This ITU engages a wide variety of learners, including activities that engage visual, auditory, kinesthetic, social, and individual learners and encourage their development.

Students can self-determine their roles in their groups, and even the set activities allow them an element of choice. Their groups are built around their own self-assessed political opinions, and many activities such as the Campaign Propaganda activity provide several options for students to choose between. Students are also given agency in seeing how their grade is created; at the end of the worksheet for the Voter Turnout Analysis activity, students can go down a checklist to see how many points they have earned on their project and become aware of areas for improvement.

Gardner's Multiple Intelligences Addressed

Visual-Spatial: Our art integration activity incorporates a variety of different visual stimuli, both for the students to examine and for them to create with their groups.

Bodily-kinesthetic: Bodily-kinesthetic learners in the US Government class running the Campaign Trail activity will be called upon to role-play and act out various roles in a campaign, and will be called upon to create campaign promotional materials by hand.

Musical: Students making advertisements and running campaigns will need to find music that fits their campaign and will appeal to voters.

Interpersonal: The campaign simulation requires students to work together to manage their campaigns.

Intrapersonal: The campaign diaries students complete individually will allow them to do self-reflection on the events of the campaign.

Linguistic: Students will need to research and determine their views on a variety of issues, requiring them to choose precise language to best fit their message.

Logical -Mathematical: Students in statistics will need to research and manipulate a variety of forms of polling data to best inform themselves.

Vocabulary List

Winner-take-all system – An election system in which the candidate with the most votes wins.

Single-member district – An electoral district in which voters choose one representative or official.

Proportional representation – Election system in which each party running receives the proportion of legislative seats corresponding to its proportion of the vote.

Electoral college – Electoral system used in electing the president and vice president, in which voters vote for electors pledged to cast their ballots for particular party’s candidates.

Safe seat – Elected office that is predictably won by one party or the other, so the success of the party’s candidate is almost taken for granted.

Coattail effect – The boost that candidates may get in an election because of the popularity of candidates above them on the ballot, especially the president.

Candidate appeal – The tendency in elections to focus on the personal attributes of a candidate, such as his/her strengths, weaknesses, background, experience, and visibility.

National tide – The inclination to focus on national issues, rather than local issues, in an election campaign. The impact of the national tide can be reduced by the nature of the candidates on the ballot who might have differentiated themselves from their party or its leader if the tide is negative, as well as competition in the election.

Name recognition – Incumbents have an advantage over challengers in election campaigns because voters are more familiar with them, and incumbents are more recognizable.

Caucus – A meeting of local party members to choose party officials or candidates for public office and to decide the platform.

National party convention – A national meeting of delegates elected at primaries, caucuses, or state conventions who assemble once every four years to nominate candidates for president and vice president, ratify the party platform, elect officers, and adopt rules.

Interested money – Financial contributions by individuals or groups in the hope of influencing the outcome of the election and subsequently influencing policy.

Federal Election Commission (FEC) - A commission created by the 1974 amendments to the Federal Election Campaign Act to administer election reform laws. It consists of six commissioners appointed by president and confirmed by the Senate. Its duties include overseeing disclosure of campaign finance information and public funding of presidential elections, and enforcing contribution limits.

Soft money – Contributions to a state or local party for party-building purposes.

Hard money – Donations made to political candidates, party committees, or groups which, by law, are limited and must be declared.

Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) – Largely banned party soft money, restored a long-standing prohibition on corporations and labor unions for using general treasury funds for electoral purposes, and narrowed the definition of issue advocacy.

Issue advocacy – Promoting a particular position or an issue paid for by interest groups or individuals but not candidates. Much issue advocacy is often electioneering for or against a candidate, and until 2004 had not been subject to any regulation.

527 organizations – Interest groups organized under section 527 of the Internal Revenue Code may advertise for or against candidates. If their source of funding is corporations or unions, they have some restrictions on broadcast advertising. 527 organizations were important in recent elections.

Independent expenditures – Money spent by individuals or groups not associated with candidates to elect or defeat candidates for office.

Political Action Committee (PAC)- an organization that raises money privately to influence elections or legislation, especially at the federal level.

SuperPAC – a type of independent political action committee which may raise unlimited sums of money from corporations, unions, and individuals but is not permitted to contribute to or coordinate directly with parties or candidates.

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